Okular – Sexforce (Self Released)
Thursday, 2nd May 2013
Quite the garish cover, eh? Reminds Deafened of the Def Leppard video for “Stand Up (Kick Love into Motion),” specifically, the handsy aspect of the two humans on the cover. Don’t ask us how we remember such things, although it’s a fair assumption to state that Def Leppard used to rock pretty hard circa High ‘n’ Dry. “Another Hit and Run.” That’s the jam.
Sexforce is the title of Okular’s second album, a band that is primary creation of Norwegian musician Andreas Aubert. The goal appears to be to take the path around the recent works of Borknagar and Vintersorg and streamline, which is not a bad idea. Of course, the cover is a really bad idea, but we’ll forget about it for now. In fact, Mr. V himself pops up on “The Greatest Offender,” which doesn’t have the desired effect it should. Rather, Sexforce is a hard to digest album, with a boatload of quirky melodies and extreme metal ideas that don’t mesh well. “Ride the Waves of Emotion” hits it off with a dissonant push, while “Exposing the Good Citizens” gets going thanks to the guest vocals of Susperia’s Athera, who probably would have been better served staying off the boat altogether.
One of the more unintentionally obtuse and weird albums to cross our desk of late, Sexforce is an extreme progressive metal experiment gone awry. But hey, the cover will get people to take a second look, as will the involvement of some key players in the Norwegian metal scene. Not much else is going on.
